walking daily in the shadow of the cross

Sexual Integrity

When you’re spacing out in class… what do you think about? When you’re laying awake at night and can’t sleep, what are consumes your dreams: video games, music, your friends, a “friend,” good grades, sports, achievements, or some other fantasy?

Those dreams and desires say a lot about who we are and what we desire.

Mark Twain said, “A human being has a natural desire for more than what he needs.” Whether it’s money, food, pleasure, whatever… we want as much of something as we can get.

But when good things becomes obsessions, they begin to control us. They become obsessions. We can even become prisoners to our own desires. We need to learn to say “No!” to ourselves, keeping good desires within healthy boundaries while refusing to entertain our bad desires which can cause us harm.

Like this:

Each Friday I try to provide a few articles that are worth the time of parents and youth workers. These articles span a number of issues, and not all are written by Christians, but they are all “worth your time.” Here’s the latest edition:

The Real Abuse at the Heart of ’50 Shades of Grey’ Kristen O Neal
“Far from ’empowering,’ Fifty Shades seeks to remove agency. Even though it’s supposed to seem ‘sexy,’ the book even includes several instances of rape, where Ana is coerced into or outright forced to have sex. The BDSM community itself has been outspoken on the issue, distancing itself from the horrific lack of safety or consent in the novel: ‘Fifty Shades is not about fun,’ says BDSM practitioner, Sophie Morgan, in The Guardian. ‘It’s about abuse.'”

Sexual Integrity Initiative Walt Mueller & Jason Soucineck
This isn’t a blog post, but a new ministry website that launched today. This site will prove very useful to parents who are looking for resources to help their teenagers develop sexual integrity. My recommendation: Bookmark the site and check it often.

God, Protect My Girls Tim Challies
“As a dad, I pray for each of my kids just about every day, and I take it as both a joy and responsibility to bring them before the Lord. Praying for the kids is a helpful way of training myself to remember that they are his before they are mine, and that any good they experience will ultimately find its source in God himself. And I believe that prayer works—that God hears a father’s prayers for his children, and that he delights to answer those prayers. One of my most common prayers for my girls is a pray for their protection. Here is how I pray for God to protect them.”

You’re Never Going to be Fully Ready Shauna Niequest
“What have you been over-thinking, wiggling like a loose tooth? Are you hiding, planning, and information gathering, because you’re scared to plunge into something new? Are you letting your desire to do it flawlessly keep you from doing it at all?”

Yeah, Well, But What About the Crusades Kevin
“We are right to deplore the cruelty meted out by crusading Christians, but should not ignore their plight. Christians lands had been captured. Surely, they thought, this could not stand. For an American, it would have been as if Al-Qaeda sacked Washington D.C. following 9/11, set up shop for Bin Laden in the White House, and turned the Lincoln Memorial into a terrorist training center. It would be unthinkable, cowardly even, for no one to storm the city, liberate its captives, and return our nation’s capital to its rightful owners. We should never excuse the atrocities that occurred under the banner of the cross during the Crusades, but we should, at least, take pause to understand why they set out on what seems to us to be a fool’s errand.”